LMacroeconomists are generally not interested in environmental issues. These are considered to fall within the scope of microeconomics, the question being to design economic policy instruments allowing the price system to reflect the social costs of activities, in particular the costs of pollution. Some growth economists, however, make an exception: as early as the 1970s, following the oil shocks, they approached environmental issues from the angle of the consequences of the scarcity of natural resources on long-term growth, and wondered under what conditions it is possible to grow indefinitely from a finite resource base.
University teaching reflects this disinterest: short-term macroeconomics courses almost never include environmental considerations; similarly, the environment has no place in macroeconomics textbooks. On the side of academic publications, theAmerican Economic Journal – Macroeconomicsa major journal in this field of study, published four articles over the period 2009-2022 dealing with the environment or climate, out of a total of around 500…
However, it is becoming increasingly clear that the natural environment is not an immutable box whose purpose is simply to provide the natural resources used in production, and then to be the passive receptacle for our waste. Cheap fossil energy has profoundly shaped our economy and even our civilisation: our production techniques, what we consume, the way we inhabit space, how we move around, we entertain…
Loss of meaning
We are in the process of measuring how difficult and yet essential it is to wean ourselves off. Repeated climatic disasters are painfully proving to us that the damage caused by global warming has a very high cost. The aggression of Ukraine by Russia shows us what are the immediate consequences of a sudden and brutal increase in the price of fossil fuels in terms of inflation, purchasing power, activity, public finances. The changes necessary for the energy transition must be structural and massive. A macroeconomics that acts as if nothing had happened no longer makes sense.
Some economists have understood this. One of them, Jean Pisani-Ferry, brought together this fall under the auspices of France Strategy a think tank on the macroeconomic consequences of the green transition. All the institutions dealing with the economy in France take part (Insee, Treasury, General Commission for Sustainable Development, General Directorate for Energy and Climate, General Inspectorate of Finance, OECD, French Observatory of Economic Conditions, Center for prospective studies and international information, Banque de France), as well as institutions specializing in transition (Ademe, Institute of Economics for Climate, General Secretariat for Ecological Planning) and researchers. All of them will put their expertise at the service of a better understanding of the mechanisms by which the energy transition will have an impact on the performance of the economy in the short or medium term.
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